One Anti-IMF Protest SERVED the IMF/World Bank

When is an "Anti-IMF" Demo a PRO-IMF Demo?
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If one wants to help some of the world's worst health-damaging and polluting industries (and their insurers and investors) evade exposure, liabilities, criminal charges and proper regulation...simple...join the wholesome "War on Tobacco".
Why anyone would avoid an opportunity to embarrass Big Oil, the top impetus for intensifying slaughter of Iraqis, is a question.
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Over the years, Earth Day has devolved into an exhibit of corporate Greenwashing. Corporations that do damage to the planet and its wild and human inhabitants now replace those who work to protect the planet from these very industries.

There is another way to distract and derail consumer and environmental
activism against the toxics/cancer-causing industries: it's the Pretend
Enemy tactic. Industry PR agents may from a group, or convince an
existing group, to "organize" against this or that notoriously Bad
Industry...except the idea is to MINIMIZE the damage. It's to become like
the cops in "Chinatown" who do, as Jack Nicholson's character said,
"...as little as possible".

Perhaps the most successful use of the Pretend Enemy ploy occurred when Big Asbestos entered into a "settlement"... and thereby avoided
bankruptcy, avoided full responsibility for harms, and screwed untold
numbers of victims out of rights to challenge or to get compensation.
[ If this sounds familiar, the same attorney, Ron Motley, who pulled off
the asbestos scam, did the big work on the cig "settlement" as well. ]

On Sept 23, a week before the REAL IMF protests, a group called
"Essential Action" demonsrated at the IMF building. They used a big
"Marlboro" box labeled as "Pack of Lies". If the lies of omission and
commission by both the Cigarette Cartel AND these "anti-tobacco" entities were put into a "pack of lies" it would be about the size of the UN building. (See "IMF tobacco protest tomorrow" on DC indymedia site at http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=30182

Described as a "small protest", at IMF headquarters, Essential Action
(sad to say, a spin-off from Nader groups) demonstrated that the IMF
wasn't doing enough to fight "smoking" and was, in fact, promoting it.
Sounds quite wholesome, doesn't it? Well, to all appearances, this
constitutes either an intentional fraud on the public, or an abysmally
ignorant action that actually benefits the Cigarette Cartel, the very
industry it purports to condemn. Are we supposed to believe that the
"anti-smoking" crusade, as seen in Corporate Media about every two
minutes...as promoted by top corporations and top gov't recipients of
corporate funding...is a "grassroots"....almost anarchistic...movement?
Not flipping likely.

Here's a list of points to consider about this event, and this crusade.
Apply these to not only "Essential Action" but virtually any of the
well-funded "anti-smoking" groups around the land:

* They never define "smoking" or "cigarette" or even "tobacco", the very
things they say they oppose. This isn't just junk science,it's NO
science. "Smoke" can mean emissions from anything burning. Smoke from a burning Vinyl factory is catastrophically different from smoke from, say, burning natural plants. It can mean smoke from tobacco. HOWEVER, smoke from a typical cigarette contains FAR more than tobacco smoke...IF it even contains tobacco smoke.
It's got radiation from the still legal use of contaminated phosphate
tobacco fertilizers. There's dioxin from a host of chlorine adulterants;
and more smoke from any number of many hundreds of untested, often toxic and carcinogenic non-tobacco additives. Generally, this is smoke that is outlawed from industrial incinerators but, to protect the complicit
industries from liability, it is still, incredibly, permitted in cigs
despite the famous health problems. Honest science and medicine REQUIRES that this smoke be analyzed and described...certainly before any claims are made about dangers of tobacco.

* Essential Action's ignoring of the MANY secret, untested, deadly
non-tobacco parts of cigs HELPS cigarette makers by bringing the
liabilities and even possible criminal charges down to a bare
minimum or eliminating them entirely...as if they only sold natural tobacco...as if this is what Native American peoples used for 10,000 years.

* They ignore the 450 still legal (!) tobacco pesticides and the residues
that contaminate cigarettes and unwitting consumer's lungs. This protects Big Oil and Big Pharmaceuticals which make tobacco pesticides.
Essential Action, helpfully, casts all blame for diseases on the tobacco
plant. This gaping hole in their information also protects the
industry-funded legislators who publicly are "concerned" about smoking and health but, to this day, ignore and allow pesticide residues in typical cigarettes, despite indisputable and unavoidable harms.

* Essential Action ignores dioxin, from chlorine, not from tobacco, in
cigarette smoke. Dioxin is a product of incineration of chlorine
elements...such as chlorine-bleached cigarette paper, chlorine
pesticides, pesticide-contaminated agricultural additives and chlorine-
contaminated industrial waste cellulose used to make fake tobacco. (See
US Patents about that.) One CANNOT, now, ignore dioxin. There is no safe
dose. It bioaccumulates. The US belatedly declared it a KNOWN Human
Carcinogen, and the US actually signed an international treaty to
globally eliminate dioxin. Dioxin's noted effects include...besides
cancer...hormone disruption, nervous system damage, learning
disabilities,birth defects and pregnancy disruption....for starters.
Why then are chlorine elements still permitted in cigarettes? To remove it because of the health hazards would cause liability problems, to say the least, for Big Oil, Big Pesticides, Big Paper and Pulp, the Agricultural
conglomerates, Pharmaceuticals and others...all who are driving forces of the IMF....and World Bank.

* Essential Action has never revealed, or even raised the question about
just how harmful TOBACCO, itself, is. If real or determined effects of
using plain tobacco proved to be significantly different than the
well-noted effects from using the typical Dioxin Dowels (or Pesticide
Pegs?), this would constitute an expanded indictment of the cigarette manufacturers and a massive indictment of the cig adulterants
industries, the cig makers, and the paid-off officials who coldly let
this continue for decades. It would also severely indict the media for
gross failures to question a bit of this.

[ NOTE: This is NOT to say that even the purest tobacco is without SOME
risk, like anything else. The thing is, no studies have been presented to
SHOW what the risk IS. Also, tobacco smoke, as opposed to typical
cigarette smoke, is INCAPABLE of causing all the diseases laid at it's
door. Dioxin, on the other hand, IS known to cause those things. ]

* Essential Action fails to say a word about top US Health (!) Insurers
ownership of holdings in top cigarette firms. Like Essential Action, Insurers and investors in the Cig Cartel (manufacturers and ingredients suppliers), prefer to ignore everything except tobacco. No one except God or Mother Nature can be sued for "manufacturing tobacco"...but these entities CAN be sued, and rightly jailed, for mass poisoning (and
killing) of uninformed consumers.

* Essential Action claims to want to "protect the kids". Really? It ignores
"burn accelerants" in cigs that cause thousands of fires a year that
injure, orphan or kill kids. As noted above, it ignores dioxin which is
especially harmful to the young. And it ignores all the sweet and
flavorful and soothing additives that make typical products so appealing
to young tastes. Essential Action, in the glorious tradition of Police Security States everywhere, promotes "tougher" laws ON THE KIDS!...the victims! It also supports "tougher" laws on shop and bar owners (who had NOTHING to do with creating Marlboros or other mini-toxics-incinerators) and on others...anyone BUT the perpetrators.

* Essential Action has no concerns about the inevitable consequences of
any potential Prohibition...of yet another natural plant...for the
economic benefit of pretty much the SAME industries that benefit from
Prohibition of cannabis.
(The first battle of the War on Cannabis was bombardment with taxes. Sound familiar? Hemp, pot's non-psychoactive cousin...is a threat to Big Oil in that it could REPLACE a wide variety of oil/petrochemical products. And, since hemp is non toxic...it's use would make petrochemicals look even worse than seen now, by comparison. There would BE no comparison of harms because hemp doesn't HAVE any.)

* Essential Action calls this "tobacco". That, coincidentally, is JUST
what the cigarette makers themselves call it! Despite popularity of
the term, it is INCORRECT. If one knows better, it may a LIE. If one knows better and uses the term under oath...it's perjury and other crimes
relating to evasion of process of law. An ally of Essential Action is a
smarmy group called "Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids". Funny...if kids smoke certain cigarettes, they may ALREADY be "tobacco free".
There is no requirement that a cigarette contain any tobacco at all! A
typical cig may be partly or entirely made, in many patented processes,
of fake tobacco derived from things like Paper Manufacturing Waste,
Municipal Paper Waste, Timber Products Waste, Food Processing Waste and so forth. One would THINK that if a group works to condemn Big Cig, it would mention this, and other, scandalous, indicting facts. Essential Action has nothing but blind eyes and shut mouths about all of it.

* Essential Action claims to frown on "addiction"...but, oddly, refuses
to condemn the STILL LEGAL (forgive caps) addition of Addiction Enhancing substances in typical smokes.

* Essential Action demands "openness in government" etc...but, strangely,
fails to ask for a listing of cigarette ingredients. The US Senate was
scheduled to recently address the issue of the FDA regulating
cigarettes...which would, of course, entail listing and testing of ALL
non-tobacco constituents. Essential Action's "tobacco" e-mail list and
its web site forgot to announce this possible legislation (S. 2626).

* Essential Action purports to be a Crusader Against Corporate Crime and
misdeeds etc. Not so sure. It ignores the juicy fact that the famous
cigarette "settlements" with states are so fraudulent that they actually
PERMIT the money (from smokers, not from investors) to be RETURNED to
various parts of the cigarette industry!!
Dave Barry, in Wash. Post, mentioned this money going to tobacco growers in one case. But...it may also go to insurers that insure cig makers and additives suppliers, it may go to insurers that have huge investments in manufacturers and suppliers, it may go to pharmaceuticals that make tobacco pesticides and additives, and it may go to cig advertisers.
Where it is NOT going is to prosecution of those responsible for putting non-tobacco toxins and carcinogens into cigarettes. It is NOT going to health care for uninformed, unprotected and insufficiently warned victims. It is NOT going for any campaign to REPEAL the insane 1984 Comprehensive Smoking Education Act...that FORBIDS even Congress members or Public Health officials (or liability lawyers) to reveal what's in a cigarette!
And it's sure not going to subsidize organic tobacco farming...to prevent farm land loss, to eliminate one of the two most pesticide-drenched crops (cotton being the other), to mitigate risks, to lower smoking rates, to produce bio-mass for non-smoking uses, and to prevent the nightmare of another "drug" Prohibition.

So...what's Essential Action doing "protesting" at the IMF?? In light of
the above, it seems clear that the goal is to take advantage of the great
successes of REAL protesters and demonstrators and to trick activists
into JOINING the "war on tobacco" that, as noted above, serves the IMF
and World Bank and top polluting, health damaging industries so well.

I haven't seen further news of this Essential Action "protest" but it's
doubtful if there was any tear gas, arrests or trouble with cops that
would be signs of a real, potentially-effective action against
corporate/gov't crime. Essential Action didn't choose to join the
legitimate IMF protests a week later. Their "protest" might be compared, for the sake of illustration, to a protest at the Torture Device Industry...for not hiring the handicapped.

Just one place to start self-educating about this so-far "Taboo" issue is
at http://www.ktc.com/~bdrake There's links there to all sorts of interesting
things that, so far, have not appeared in the papers...even most
progressive ones, for some reason.